Month: May 2020

El fantasma de la opereta (1960)

EL FANTASMA DE LA OPERETA (1960)
aka The Phantom of the Operetta
Article 4480 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-20-2014
Directed by Fernando Cortes
Featuring German Valdes, Ana Luisa Puluffo, Luis Aldas
Country: Mexico
What it is: Horror comedy

A buffoon and his girlfriend plan to reopen a closed opera house, only to discover that the place is haunted by a masked phantom.

I’ve already covered the 1955 version of this story, though I would be hard-pressed to compare the two, since I’ve only been able to catch either one in a Spanish language print without English subtitles. It’s pretty much what you’d expect for a comic version of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, and though it looks fairly well-made, it doesn’t seem anything particularly special. Granted, it might be a lot funnier if I could follow the dialogue, but the visual humor doesn’t offer a whole lot in the way of surprises. As is often the case when I watch Mexican comedies under these circumstances, the musical numbers turn out to be the highlights, largely because they can be enjoyed regardless of the language problem. But then, musical numbers in Mexican horror comedies tend to be pretty strange.

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Pete’s Dragon (1977)

PETE’S DRAGON (1977)
Article 4479 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-19-2014
Directed by Don Chaffey
Featuring Sean Marshall, Helen Reddy, Jim Dale
Country: USA
What it is: Disney fantasy
A dragon saves a young boy from an abusive family. Can he find a home for him in a nearby town as well?

This ambitious Disney combination of live-action and animation is sometimes cute, sometimes effective, and is quite colorful. I also have no doubt that it has its fans; any Disney children’s movie is probably going to be some child’s first taste of cinematic magic. But at 128 minutes, I found myself frequently feeling itchy and seeking to take breaks, especially when the folks at hand burst into another song; I would gladly jettison nearly half of the musical numbers in this one. The incessant broadness of the acting is also a sticking point as well; with almost everyone in the cast playing as big as possible, I couldn’t help but gravitate towards Helen Reddy as my favorite performer here, as she’s the only one who seemed to opt to play a recognizable human being and not an overwrought cliche. Maybe I would have loved it if I’d seen it as a kid, but I also suspect that I might have gotten bored with some of the musical numbers as well. At any rate, I don’t consider this Disney at its best.

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Panic (1982)

PANIC (1982)
aka Bakterion
Article 4478 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-18-2014
Directed by Tonino Ricci
Featuring David Warbeck, Janet Agren, Roberto Ricci
Country: Italy / Spain
What it is: Monster on the loose.

A man infected by a plague virus has turned into a hideous blood-drinking monster. Can the authorities apprehend and destroy him before the government destroys the city in a cover-up?

What we’ve got here is you basic “monster on the loose” movie, and that’s something you don’t see too often from Italian cinema of this period. That gives the movie a certain novelty value. Unfortunately, that’s about all the movie has going for it. It’s a dreary, repetitive, barely plotted mess that just seems to rotate three scenes – monster attacks, investigations, government cover-up. You might get a snicker out of the fact that our hero is called Captain Kirk, and you may wonder why the police don’t wear gas-masks when they go into the sewers, especially since they know the fumes are poisonous. However, I will give the movie credit for pulling one thing off; when a young couple decides to go to a movie, the film they end up watching (which appears to consist of nothing but cars driving around while goofy music plays) looks even worse than the movie they’re in.

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OSS 117 – Murder for Sale (1968)

OSS 117-MURDER FOR SALE (1968)
aka Niente rose per OSS 117, OSS 117: Double Agent
Article 4477 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-17-2014
Directed by Renzo Cerrato, Jean-Pierre Desegnat, Andre Hunebelle
Featuring John Gavin, Margaret Lee, Curd Jurgens
Country: Italy / France
What it is: Spyghetti

OSS 117 goes undercover as an assassin in the hopes of catching the interest of a secret organization that arranges political assassinations, so that he can destroy that organization.

The presence of three directors makes me suspect that this movie had a bit of a troubled production history, and its 5.1 rating on IMDB as of this writing is an indication that this foray into Eurospy territory isn’t highly regarded. Yet I have to admit to quite liking this one; the story is clear and easy to follow, the humor is effective, it mostly takes itself fairly seriously, and John Gavin (who was originally pegged to play James Bond himself in DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, but lost the opportunity when Connery returned to the role) is quite appealing. Curd Jurgens makes for an entertaining heavy, and I recognize George Eastman from any number of other movies I’ve seen. However, this movie is quite stingy with the fantastic content; there’s some minor gadgetry, but I’m not sure there’s quite enough to make it truly genre. Still, this one was entertaining enough to pass muster.

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Oh, God! Book II (1980)

OH, GOD! BOOK II (1980)
Article 4476 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-16-2014
Directed by Gilbert Cates
Featuring George Burns, Suzanne Pleshette, David Birney
Country: USA
What it is: Spirituality sequel

God picks a little girl to perform a mission for him; spread the word of his existence by writing a slogan for him and then spreading it around.

I quite liked the original movie; it had a quiet, gentle, modest and low-key air about it that made it very likable. It was also one of those movies that felt (to me, anyway) that it would have been better as a stand-alone effort rather than as part of a franchise. As a result, I didn’t have the slightest interest in this sequel when it came out. Oh, it still has George Burns, and he still has that same appeal he had in the earlier movie. But the script is a repeat of the original, with a few details jiggled around here and there, and by choosing a little girl as the protagonist this time around, it’s also a little more manipulative. It even inexplicably repeats one of the oddest touches in the original movie; it casts a well-known character actor (Donald Pleasence in the original, Hans Conried here), and gives them one single line in the whole movie. Perhaps the biggest problem is that the laugh lines are nowhere near as sharp as they were in the earlier movie. The movie is not awful (George Burns is just too likable here for that to happen), but it is unnecessary; at least he next one in the series would try to take it in a different direction.

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The Nude Bomb (1980)

THE NUDE BOMB (1980)
Article 4475 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-15-2014
Directed by Clive Donner
Featuring Don Adams, Andrea Howard, Sylvia Kristel
Country: USA
What it is: “Get Smart” revival

Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, is called on to prevent KAOS from blackmailing the world with its new weapon, a bomb that can destroy every shred of clothing in the world.

Let’s see, Chief has been replaced, there’s no Control, 99 is missing, there’s no Hymie, Siegfried, or Starker, the wonderful original theme music is used nowhere, and there’s no reprise of Smart walking through the endless doors. So that leaves only Don Adams and Robert Karvelas (as Larrabee) as the strong links to the original series, and, truth be told, this movie made me realize just how much I missed all the others. Sure, Don Adams still has his old catchphrases on hand and he uses them well, but he can’t carry the movie all on his own, especially with a weak story and a smirkingly exploitative premise like this one. The only other actors that seem to tap into the comic sense of the story are Bill Dana and Joey Forman (who takes on the role of Agent 13). The movie is at its worst when it’s trying to be more adult or relying on some terrible action sequences. I have a great fondness for the original series; I have little for this movie.

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La revolte des Pretoriens (1964)

LA REVOLTE DES PRETORIENS (1964)
aka Revolt of the Praetorians, La rivolta dei pretoriani
Article 4474 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-14-2014
Directed by Alfonso Brescia
Featuring Richard Harrison, Moira Orfei, Piero Lulli
Country: Italy
What it is: Sword and Sandal epic

In ancient Rome, a hero known as the Red Wolf fights against the tyranny of the emperor Domitian.

According to my sources, the fantastic content in this foray into Sword and Sandal territory is the existence of a conjurer. I wonder if they mean the priestess of Isis who is in league with Domition. If so, I don’t recall her having any special powers or doing anything more than giving her goddess lip service. There’s also a line of dialogue about the hero’s fantastic strength, but I don’t see him doing much of anything that I would call superhuman. So that leaves us with a movie that is pretty empty in the way of fantastic content, and the basic tyranny-vs-revolution plot doesn’t have much in the way of real interest value to compensate for that, at least to these eyes. It is fairly well made, though, and it does get some points with coming up with a fun little gimmick towards the end of the movie, when the revolutionaries get the help of a troupe of entertainers to help them; their involvement in the battle scenes adds some real fun to the proceedings. Nonetheless, I found this one mostly dull.

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The Invincible Brothers Maciste (1964)

THE INVINCIBLE BROTHERS MACISTE (1964)
aka Gli invincibili fratelli Maciste
Article 4473 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-13-2014
Directed by Roberto Mauri
Featuring Iloosh Khoshabe, Mario Novelli, Claudie Lange
Country: Italy
What it is: Sword and Sandal

Two brothers named Maciste do battle with an underground kingdom run by an evil queen.

Here’s a concept for you; this movie has TWO Macistes; Maciste the Elder and Maciste the Younger. This must certainly be a blessing for anyone who can’t get enough of Maciste. Unfortunately, it looks like this concept must have been more expensive than I’d thought; the rest of the production looks very cheap, almost threadbare on occasions. One thing is for sure -not much money was spent on the translation or the dubbing, which is full of stiff, wooden dialogue delivered badly. The main compensation is that the two Macistes are actually pretty good when they’re not talking; they know how to handle themselves in a fight, and they have the necessary screen presence to hold the interest, (especially Iloosh Khoshabe as the older Maciste). The story is the usual evil queen nonsense, though since most of the action takes place in an underground matriarch inhabited by beautiful women and leopard men, it has at least a decent amount of fantastic content, and this is further enhanced by the fact that both of the Macistes do have super strength. Yes, it may be one of the chintziest films from the genre, but it certainly isn’t the worst.

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